No home advantage for Rose

Justin Rose will try to forget that he is on home soil as he looks to make the Open Championship his third victory in succession this week.

Rose produced a flawless closing 65 to win the Scottish Open at Royal Aberdeen on Sunday, a fortnight after winning the Quicken Loans National on the PGA Tour.

It is the first time in his career that Rose has won consecutive events and the 33-year-old knows making it a hat-trick will be a massive ask at Hoylake giving his previous Open record.

Since famously finishing fourth as a 17-year-old amateur in 1998, Rose has not recorded another top-10 finish in 11 attempts, missing the cut in three of the last four years.

But perhaps there is a good omen in the fact that Tiger Woods was the last player to make a major championship his third consecutive victory, winning the Open the last time it was staged at Hoylake in 2006, then adding the Buick Open and the US PGA Championship in a run of seven straight strokeplay wins that season.

"I've tried to see it as my home major and I am not paying attention to that now," Rose told Press Association Sport. "A major is a major.

"If Tiger is playing the US Open he doesn't think, 'This is my home major', it's just another major championship. From that perspective I am just trying to deflect any extra pressure and although my recent Open record is not good, I do take confidence from Turnberry in 2009 for example.

"Even though the record book won't suggest it [he finished 13th], I was right in the hunt there. I played beautiful golf that week, good enough to win and I know that. There's been a few occasions where I've had good runs and a few occasions where I've been on the bad side of the draw.

"If you go out and play wonderful golf you can make up for the draw, but if you are sort of borderline the draw can make a big difference too. I am trying not to pay too much attention to it (my record) but I have played great links golf in my career in different times so I just have to put it all together next week."

Rose already has one major trophy in his cabinet thanks to last year's US Open triumph at Merion and added: "I've got a nice trophy case with varying sizes to fit all options so hopefully there will be more. I'll build a new house if need be. That won't be a problem."

And he has been backed to add more trophies to his collection by the man he beat into second place at Merion and who performed the Scottish Open-Open Championship double 12 months ago.

"Prior to last year I think everybody would rule him out because he won the week before. But now that it's been done, and somebody has won the week before and followed it up with the Open Championship, I think it's an advantage," Mickelson said.

"I think it's an advantage to play the Scottish Open on links golf, get acclimated to the time over here, get acclimated to seeing the ball bounce, and the fescue and thicker grasses on the greens and long lag putts that we are going to have, and putting in crosswinds.

"All those things happened last week and gives the players that played a distinct advantage. And the fact that he's playing well, he's going to be in contention."

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